calendario eventi  :: 

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11/3/2011

Two exhibitions

The Wapping Project Bankside, London

YOHJI’S WOMEN
Photographs by Nick Knight, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Peter Lindbergh, Craig McDean, Sarah Moon, Paolo Roversi, Max Vadukul

Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin Maggie Screaming - Yohji Yamamoto Campaign, Fall 1999 Coinciding with the Yohji Yamamoto retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Wapping Project Bankside will show the photographs of seven international photographers who can be said to have first found their individual voices as part of the thrilling burst of creativity engendered by Yamamoto’s arrival in Europe 30 years ago. The exhibition of photographs will make concrete the breadth of some of Yamamoto’s key collaborators achieved through his career.

Now reading like a roll call of the world’s finest, most imaginative and established fashion photographers, the list includes Nick Knight, Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin, Peter Lindbergh, Craig McDean, Sarah Moon, Paolo Roversi, and Max Vadukul. Central to this mix is Yamamoto’s close associate, Art Director Marc Ascoli. Ascoli’s introduction of extremely young, promising, hot British photographers, then mostly in their early twenties, was crucial to the ground breaking results, and his initiative was followed by M/M(Paris) who collaborated with Yohji Yamamoto for 5 creative years.

Titled Yohji’s Women, the exhibition expresses both Yamamoto’s love of strong women, who do not fit the conventional, magazine archetypes but rather were independent exciting women who could wear his complex clothes with authority and a grown up, challenging sexuality; the kind of women who knew their own minds, and whose serious beauty found its expression in the work of Yamamoto. Such women have an aura of secrecy or privacy which bubbles up subliminally and which gives the sensual charge and enigmatic edge which is the essence of Yamamoto’s work. The cut and movement of a dress or coat, the sexually androgynous feel of the clothes mask what is obvious but suggest all that may be revealed.

Springing from an eastern aesthetic, thoughts turn to the kimono, its folds and pleats wrappings and windings and the process and time it takes to unveil, reveal and disclose. Yohji’s women embody this timed disclosure and these photographers, each in their independent ways, each with his or her own potent voice, expressed it. The photographs capture the vigour, wit and exuberance of Yamamoto’s work as well as a remarkable moment in time in which clothes, designer, icon, place and photographer spoke with one voice...

Yohji’s Women, like his clothes, have a deep, elusive quality, which is delicate, warm, fragile and grounded clearly in architecture, form and structure. They are women who hold their secrets close, just as Yohji’s clothes do.

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THE WAPPING PROJECT
YOHJI MAKING WAVES
12 March – 10 July 2011

Making up the third element of the series of exhibitions devoted to the work of the iconic Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto in 2011, The Wapping Project will install just one major piece in the cavernous Boiler House of the Wapping Hydraulic Power Station; the celebrated, oversized white silk wedding dress with bamboo crinoline (A/W 1998). The installation seeks to capture by way of metaphor (an approach intrinsic to the complex world of Yamamoto), something of the wit, simplicity and imagination of this extraordinarily influential designer. The dress will fall from the huge metal tanks which make up the roof of the Boiler House, apparently descending into a bottomless tank of water. The black depths of the darkened space will reflect and refract the falling dress, multiplying the image of the pale, voluminous silk garment, while the white hat supported by bamboo sticks will float freely.

A single row of domestic light bulbs will glimmer just above the water level, illuminating the space with a modest, ghostly glow. Every ten minutes a wave will make its way across the space, disturbing the image almost as Yamamoto disrupted the conventions of Western design and the ripples will expand out beyond the falling dress. Close inspection of the work will be possible from a small wooden boat, rowed to the centre of the space by a boatman.

This is a calm, contemplative work which should also disarm and amuse, bringing together a sense of fun and juxtaposing it with an austere beauty. Paradox lies at the heart of Yamamoto’s clothes and it is with this striking installation that we attempt to do justice to his vision.
The installation is created in collaboration with Yamamoto's long-time collaborator, scenographer and lighting designer, Masao Nihei.

www.thewappingproject.com

Press Information: Jules Wright, 020 7680 2080; jules@thewappingproject.com;
Priscilla Granozio, 020 7981 9851 press@thewappingprojectbankside.com

Image: Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin Maggie Screaming - Yohji Yamamoto Campaign, Fall 1999

The Wapping Project Bankside
65a Hopton Street - London
Open Tue-Sat from 10am to 6pm, Monday by appointment.

Wapping Hydraulic Power Station
Wapping Wall, E1W 3SG
Open Monday – Friday noon to midnight; Saturday and Sunday from 10.00am.
Closed on Sunday night.

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